The best doctor in the Pentagon undertook on Monday to defend the budget of $ 61 billion in the military health system, but said that others could be done to balance resources and improve medical care.
Dr. Steve Ferrara, acting assistant secretary of the Defense Department for the Defense of Health Affairs, told an audience of the Society of Federal Health Professionals that the system, which serves 9.6 million beneficiaries, is a “force multiplier” which responds to the priority of the defense secretary Pete Hegseth to strengthen the American operational forces.
In his role as an interim assistant secretary, Ferrara said that he would show Hegseth how the military health system, or MHS, represents 7% of the first row of the Pentagon, is “100% worthy”. THE The press has been excluded from the conferenceDespite the fact that journalists have access for years, but Military.com has examined a recording of Ferrara’s speech.
“I show him how we take these 7% – which was obviously jealously beaten, whether for bullets or bombs or submarines or tanks or planes – and use these 7% to make force more fatal, more able to fight and win,” said Ferrara during the speech.
The military health system has undergone a vast transformation over the past decade, with military processing facilities, medical logistics, information technologies, acquisitions, Tricking Health program for non -uniform beneficiaries and other consolidated services under the Defense Health Agency, while health care in active service, uniform training and development has become the responsibility for medical orders for services.
The reforms were designed to save money by eliminating triple functions Army,, Navy and Air Force medical orders and rationalization of the Pentagon health organization. But they have left numerous hospitals and military clinics in sub -employment and patients leave – or are forced – the private sector, endangering the balance of the system.
This year, the troubles have shown delays in patient care following a change in Tricare management entrepreneurs and billing processors, and Friday, head of the Defense Health Agency, Lieutenant-General of the Telita Crosland army, unexpectedly resigned without explanation.
Ferrara, an interventional retirement radiologist of the Navy and former CIA head doctor who is married to a pediatric navy nephrologist, said that a functional quality health care system is vital for the preparation of the United States armed forcesAn “ethical imperative” that the nation must honor.
Ferrara said that her priorities were to “support, support and strengthen” – support combatants, maintain professional medical skills and strengthen the chain made up of generations of providers who have served and joined in the future.
To ensure satisfaction, he said, the system must work for everyone, including the injured soldier on the battlefield, the training of sailor at home, the soldiers who need integrated mental health providers and family members who are sick or injured.
“The last thing a family or this member of the service needs is to worry about whether their family gets adequate or high quality care,” said Ferrara.
In a separate speech at the Amsus conference at National Harbor, Maryland, the naval surgeon Darin, Via, said that naval medicine is about 10% below its total capacity in Manning, a deficit that felt the most in military treatment facilities.
“This is the most felt with access to care. Regarding the sailor, the navy and their families, where it is the most affected, it is when someone undergoes an injury (anterior cross -crossed). If you are a professional athlete, you would make surgery) as soon as the swelling descends in a few weeks,” said the word revised by Military.com.
“According to the MTFS, it is whenever the orthopod can obtain or time in the calendar, which is already limited because there are not enough anesthesiologists, there are not enough nurses or there are not enough technicians (surgery).”
Ferrara said that to make improvements, the system must ensure that its priorities and resources are linked, to seek “discrepancies” and to walk on a new land, by examining the improved partnerships with the Department of Veterans CombatorsAcademic health centers and foreign allies.
According to Ferrara, the Pentagon must repair its military hospital system; Maximize the value of the Tricare Health Program and “simplify the Tricare Experience”; And take advantage of technology, especially the doubling of remote charts to increase capacity and use artificial intelligence.
Ferrara added that this review is an initiative “all hands on the bridge”, calling for those who work daily in the military health system to express their ideas.
“I hope you can help me solve my problems, so thank you in advance,” said Ferrara.
President Donald Trump appointed the former CIA Keith Bass medical directorA retired naval officer, rehabilitation advisor and health administrator, for the assistant defense secretary for health matters.
Bass has not published any public comments on the future of health care of the Ministry of Defense. He was chief of the White House Medical Unit from 2017 to 2019 and, at the time of his appointment, was the director of the West Texas Medical Center Va Health Care System.
The Bass confirmation hearing before the Senate Armed Services Committee was not set.
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